This is the joint website of Women Against Rape and Black Women's Rape Action Project. Both organisations are based on self-help and provide support, legal information and advocacy. We campaign for justice and protection for all women and girls, including asylum seekers, who have suffered sexual, domestic and/or racist violence.

WAR was founded in 1976. It has won changes in the law, such as making rape in marriage a crime, set legal precedents and achieved compensation for many women. BWRAP was founded in 1991. It focuses on getting justice for women of colour, bringing out the particular discrimination they face. It has prevented the deportation of many rape survivors. Both organisations are multiracial.

International news

Rape in Iraq

It was neither the Red Cross nor the Amnesty report that propelled the torture of Iraqi prisoners on to the front pages. It was the photos. The torture carried on until the ocular proof made political embarrassment unavoidable. Yet the photos of rape and other sexual torture of women at Abu Ghraib prison have still not been released to the public (The other prisoners, G2, May 20). Evidence of the widespread rape of women soldiers within the US military has similarly been ignored. Yet US National Public Radio mentioned 10 days ago that 100 US women soldiers claim to have been raped by their colleagues in Iraq. Why is this not pursued and reported here? We wrote to all women MPs and peers asking them to press for full disclosure of what is happening to women in Iraq at the hands of both US and UK troops. We have not received a single reply.

The UN resolution to classify rape as a method of war is a victory for the thousands of individual rape survivors and organisations like ours that have campaigned for official recognition of rape as torture and persecution.

Our petition (attached) with this demand has been circulating since October 2006 and collected thousands of signatures, including from prominent people like Caroline Moorhead, Gareth Peirce, Juliet Stevenson and Benjamin Zephaniah.

On International Women's Day, we demand justice for Giuliana Sgrena and the Iraqi women raped and killed by US troops.

We have just found out that the US troops who shot Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena - and killed Nicola Caliperi whose sacrifice saved her life - immediately after her release from kidnap, were from a military unit under investigation last year for raping Iraqi women, according to US army documents. Ms Sgrena had published in her paper testimonies of Iraqi women ex-prisoners who had been raped and sexually abused in Abu Ghraib, and other prisons.

Today, on International Women's Day, the Guardian published correspondent Suzanne Goldenberg's report on the 3rd Infantry Brigade exposing that:

Since our No Blood or Rape for Oil Open letter to MPs, news of continuing rape by military forces in Iraq has been coming out, but has received little attention in the mainstream media; this article is by respected Iraqi academic living in Britain, Haifa Zangana

Coming clean on rape and other sexual torture of women and girls at the hands of US and UK armed forces or their agents in Iraq and Afghanistan
By Black Women’s Rape Action Project and Women Against Rape
LINKS AND PUTTING UP Arabic Castellano Catalan Croatian French Hindi (pdf) Italian Serbian

We are writing to you, women legislators in both the UK and the US. That there are now many more women in Congress and in Parliament is due to a massive women’s movement over decades in every area of this planet. In the name of all the women whose movement helped get you there, we ask for your accountability in the present crisis of war, occupation, war crimes and torture, including rape, in which both your governments are complicit.

1. The rape and other torture of women and girls has been largely hidden

The following are excerpts from a paper by Rev. Dorothy Mackey, former US Air Force Captain and Commander who herself suffered rape and sexual assault while a serving officer, at the hands of her colonel and lieutenant colonel. Neither was ever prosecuted. The US Justice Department attorney on appeal stated that they “could not bring this case to trial for national security reasons; to do so would be contrary to good order, morale and discipline in the military.”

May 11, 2004
SUBJECT: US Government and Pentagon Sanctioning of Abuses; Rapes and Abuses; Physical, Psychological, Mental, Emotional, Sexual Abuses and revictimization.

DOL DOL, Kenya (WOMENSENEWS)--Karamas Walebutunui says she was always scared of the British soldiers stationed near her remote tribal village in northern Kenya. Stories abounded of soldiers raping the pastoralist Masai women as they herded sheep and goats through the vast grasslands. Then, about 10 years ago, Walebutunui claims, her fears came true.

"I saw the men coming and I started running away but then they started emerging from the bush," recalled Walebutunui, ruffs of red, yellow and black beads wrapped around her neck and looped through her stretched earlobes. "I tried to scream and cry but there was no one to help me. When they got hold of me, five men raped me. That's all I remember."

We were appalled to learn that Municipal Judge Teresa Carr Deni dropped all rape and assault charges in the case of a woman gang-raped at gunpoint (Jill Porter, “Move afoot to unseat judge in rape ruling”, Oct 24). Because the woman was working as a prostitute, Judge Deni decided that she could not have been raped and changed the charge to “theft of services.” Deni later said that this case “minimizes true rape cases and demeans women who are really raped.”

Caribbean Times 29 July 1997 reported: "Over 70 women and men from various nationalities gathered to discuss how 'law and order' legislation diverts attention from the real obstacles which victims face in getting justice from a discriminatory legal system. The Chhatisgarh Women's Organisation, Black Women's Rape Action Project and Women Against Rape were amongst the groups who met to discuss the hardship faced by asylum seekers, wives, prostitutes and rape survivors who consistently found themselves fighting to get justice, protection and compensation."

Manju Gardia (Chhatisgarh Women’s Organisation, India) speaks at London meeting: Does “Law and Order” Lead To Justice? July 1997

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

It is my privilege to testify before you as the chairperson of CWO. It is my first time to speak on the subject “Does law and order lead to justice?”

SAN FRANCISCO (WOMENSENEWS)--A ground-breaking domestic violence case was settled out of court for $1 million Tuesday, marking the first time that monetary damages have been awarded by an American law enforcement agency to the family of a domestic violence victim, advocates said.

Maria Teresa Macias, 36, was shot to death by her estranged husband Avelino Macias in 1996 in Sonoma, Calif., before he turned the gun on himself. In the months leading up to her death, she contacted the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department at least 18 times seeking protection from her increasingly abusive husband. Despite at least eight violations of a restraining order for stalking, Avelino Macias was never arrested or detained.